Thinkers Timeline

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese writer and lady of the imperial court. She is the author of The Tale of Genji, often called the world's first novel. She was born around the year 973 in Heian-kyō, the capital of Japan (modern Kyoto). Her real name is unknown. 'Murasaki' was probably a nickname taken from a character in her novel. 'Shikibu' refers to her father's position at the Bureau of Ceremonies. She came from a lesser branch of the powerful Fujiwara family. Her father was a scholar of Chinese. He recognised her talent and taught her things normally taught only to boys, including Chinese classical literature. This education would later shape her writing in important ways. She married a much older distant cousin, Fujiwara no Nobutaka, around her mid to late twenties. They had a daughter. Her husband died of an epidemic in 1001, only two years after the marriage. Murasaki was now a young widow with a young child. She probably began writing The Tale of Genji in the years just after her husband's death. Around 1005, her writing had attracted the attention of the powerful Fujiwara no Michinaga. He brought her to court as a lady-in-waiting to Empress Shōshi, the young wife of Emperor Ichijō. Murasaki served at court for years, kept a diary, wrote poems, and continued her novel. The exact year of her death is uncertain. Most scholars accept around 1014, when she would have been about 41. Some think she may have lived later, perhaps until 1025.

Eihei Dogen (1200-1253) was a Japanese Buddhist monk whose writings founded the Soto school of Zen Buddhism and produced one of the most original bodies of religious philosophical work in East Asian history. He was born in Kyoto into a high-ranking aristocratic family and reportedly lost both parents in early childhood — his father when he was two or three, his mother at seven or eight. These early losses are traditionally said to have awakened in him a deep awareness of impermanence that would shape his later teaching. At thirteen he entered the Tendai Buddhist monastic order on Mount Hiei, the great centre of Japanese Buddhist learning. He studied there for several years but grew dissatisfied with what he saw as the corruption and decline of Japanese Buddhism. Around 1223 he travelled to China, where he spent four years in Chan (Zen) monasteries seeking a genuine teacher. At Mount Tiantong he met Rujing, a rigorous Chan master in the Caodong (Soto) lineage, and under his teaching Dogen experienced the awakening he had been seeking. He returned to Japan in 1227 with Rujing's confirmation of his enlightenment and spent the rest of his life teaching, writing, and establishing Soto Zen as a distinct tradition in Japan. He lived first at Kenninji in Kyoto, then founded Koshoji temple, and finally moved in 1243 to the remote mountains of Echizen Province, where he established Eiheiji — the monastery that remains the head temple of the Soto school. His magnum opus, the Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), is a collection of ninety-five fascicles written over about twenty-two years, treating almost every aspect of Buddhist thought and practice with extraordinary philosophical depth and linguistic inventiveness. He wrote in Japanese rather than Chinese, a decision that made his work accessible to Japanese readers but also required him to invent much of the philosophical vocabulary he needed. He died at Kyoto in 1253 at age fifty-three. His influence on Japanese religion, aesthetics, and thought has been substantial; his international reception, particularly in the twentieth century, has made him one of the most studied Buddhist thinkers outside Asia.